Time to move, time to play, time to watch, and time skip?

It's curious how time is handled in stories. In movies, probably the great majority, time flows in a pretty tight linear stream from one thing to another. However, in other mediums (notably books) time can flow in really disjointed ways--skipping around like a frog on a highway. It's amazing we humans have so little trouble following time jumps like that, but they're common and so we apparently don't mind. Flashbacks are a great example, since they yank us out of the present and throw us to some point in the past.

There are a number of movies that employ time as a major theme (actually, now that I really think about it, I'd have a pretty long list if I started naming them). I think it's because we live time from moment to moment, but remember time as much more than the progression of events and more like a flow of experience that doesn't necessarily go from one to the other but rather connects together in the wibbly fabric of our thoughts. Time is only an element of a greater whole.

Perhaps another example is the detective story, since quite a lot of those require the audience to remember all sorts of past events and pull them into the present. There don't seem to be any particular genres that utilize this more than others (except maybe science fiction and it's time travel stories). Jumping around the timeline is so normal that I don't give it much thought, until later.

- M